NEW DELHI | An Indian student was killed in a bombing in Ukraine on Tuesday, New Delhi said, urging Moscow and Kiev to provide safe passage for its nearly 12,000 nationals stranded in the country.
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It is “with deep sadness (that) we confirm that an Indian student lost his life in a bombardment in Kharkiv this morning”, declared on Twitter the spokesman of the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Arindam Bagchi.
According to him, the foreign minister asked the Russian and Ukrainian ambassadors to set up “an urgent safe passage for Indian nationals who are in Kharkiv and in the cities of other conflict zones”.
On the sixth day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the central square of Kharkiv, the country’s second city with 1.4 million inhabitants, close to the Russian border, was bombarded and the affected regional prefecture indicated the governor regional Oleg Sinegubov, in a video on Telegram showing the explosion.
Before the Russian offensive, there were about 20,000 Indians in Ukraine. Since then, about 8,000 of them have managed to leave the country, including some 1,400 who have been repatriated to India, according to the authorities.
Local media have reported that some Indian students are having difficulty accessing neighboring countries, with Ukrainian coastguards denying them passage and demanding money.
India, which has long tried to maintain a balance between Moscow and the West, abstained last week in a United Nations Security Council vote on a resolution deploring “aggression against the Ukraine” by Russia.
Russia remains India’s largest arms supplier.